:) Hi! I'm Mistletoe Angel! :)

Yay! My name is Noah Eaton, and let me tell you all a little about myself and what has made me me.

In my life I haven't always felt free-spirited and free of fear. I overcame obstacles like many children do. In fact, I was born diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome, which I never found out about until I was 12.

Asperger's Syndrome is a high form of autism that affects motor skills, social communication and learning patterns. Many who have it also are known to be ultrasensitive to the senses.

As a little boy, I grew up in Arvada, Colorado before moving four months ago to Portland, Oregon. I went to school as a boy at Warder H. Elementary School, where I always failed to fit in.

I was the little boy who didn't like to get in fighrs, the little boy who didn't like to pull the jumping legs off of grasshoppers like all kind of boys did, which they thought to be cool. It broke my heart, and because the sensitive kid tends to always be put on by peer pressure, I was called "girlish" by boys all the time and beat up ever too often!

I spent years after school secluded from society, staying in my room and drawing and watching Nick at Nite. I also had terrible seizures ever so often and bad nightmares linked to them, which occurred too often I almost wanted to commit suicide at age 12. ;(

I felt like a little boy damned and deserved to be punished because I felt like I was a disease to the world, and why no one wanted to talk to me or bully me.

But through all the tears and grief, I found strength, and my epiphany came when I went to Denver Academy when I was 16!

Before that magical February 2, 2000, when I first etched my quill upon the lucid white parchment, before the Rainbow Dancer emerged and cited my rainbow connection, before I got myself my beautiful Ovation acoustic, I was a lost spirit, but now I was currently in a massive stage of transformation, metamorphosis if you will, and the whole Tilt-A-Whirl joyride is exhilarating. I was beginning to see a whole bunch of new faces, exploring new horizons, my guitar has become my lover, and my voice is reaching for the sun, it's all dutch-door action.

Yes, before what I love to call the "Kaleidoscope Whistle" saga, there was one extraordinary man (I sure hope you're reading this, my friend) who reached his hand to me and got me immersed in the sonorous world of poetry and art...Philippe (Mozart) Ernewein, who possessed the great beat, hippy spirit!

Yes, this pony-tailed beatific bogart is my hero. My inspiration. My friend. Like The Lone Ranger, Prefontaine, and that DJ that smiled all throughout your high school party all put into that life-size teddy bear, customized deep in your inner Build-A-Bear workshop that first time you see his smile, with those friendly, beady eyes.

One day when I was feeling down and uninspired as many days, he told me his life story, written in the form of his incredible memoirs titled "Talkin' Tonto Deconstruction Blues", about how he grew up in Belgium, his father struggling of alcohol overdose and living only with his mom and siblings. He said he loved watching western gunslinger shows, especially The Lone Ranger. He said to his mom, "Mommy, are we really going to America to meet them? Are we? Are we? Are We?". And his mom promised him yes and when my teacher was 8, he moved to Virginia. Just like me, he got bullied by school kids, only because he could barely speak any English at all. He went to school on a very small school bus, he remembers, and also finally he learned English eventually and started to earn respect. Yet, he told me, he was still troubled. He didn't know what he wanted to do with his life. He was thinking "Who would ever thought I would make it this far, yet what is my grand incentive?" So when he got up to my age, he became a local disc jockey at a Richmond station, and that is actually the same time Dave Matthews was becoming popular in Virginia and touring with Hootie & The Blowfish all along the east coast. (As a matter of fact, you won't believe this, but Dave Matthews met him one fateful day and performed a few songs for my teacher in the backyard of his hometown including "Satellite" I am absolutely not kidding! They even asked him if he wanted to be a roadie, but he declined, saying he made up his mind and wanted to devote his life to college and teaching.

Finally, in inspiring him to start writing, my teacher, when he was 22, taught at a university in Louisiana. After a while, he said he got exhausted and wanted to find a place "far away from civilization". Someplace where he could dream peacefully, meditate, escape the pressures of obligation, the corundrum of expectation and routine, run over his dogma with karma. This place he went to was Chaco Canyon in New Mexico, a beautiful canyon which I actually visited with him two years ago, and there, he became a park ranger and eventually befriended all the Native American Indians there. They taught him how to make good dried bread there, displayed their traditional beliefs, and never feeling more free, he told me that moment changed his life forever and released him from the anxiety, the nervous energy. He then mentioned he searched diligently for the best schools and by Gods luck, he chose to devote his heart to Denver Academy and this is where we crossed paths.

Simply reading his memoirs and recognizing the pseudo nostalgia, the familiarity, has changed my life forever. Once he touched my heart, I wrote "An April Without Rain" about my tears. He said it was marvelous and told me I have to keep writing and let everyone know how I feel and replace the sadness with the beauty of life, which I have already soaked up much of, yay!

There are some other remarkable friends that have also driven me: Julie Doyle, Carrie Dunlap, Bill Petry, Carey Jones, Anne Laurie Twarogowski just to name a few of many. You know the proverb "Good things come to those who wait" and I am all about giving to my family. Yes, I am using the word "family" here, the proverbial use of "family" because I couldn't of got this far without them all I never thought I'd make it this far, and there proves the whole notion of "Forsake thy inhibitions, pursue thy dreams". It is clear to me now...anything is possible, and I am going to embrace what may seem impossible. So let's hear it to everyone who gave me a hug, everyone who gave me a kiss on the cheek, everyone who gave me something to read, everyone who told me a good joke, everyone who made me cry, everyone who teased me, even those who had the nerve to pick on and intimidate me as a child. All is thankful, all is appreciated, all is forgiven, and all of them have transformed me into this Mistletoe Angel you see today!

I guess in the end somehow it is feeling pain that makes us understand pain, and set us free. I believe once you feel pain, you understand compassion and can spread your love to others because you can relate to the pain and tears of others. We all need friends, for I now believe we are all one great, rainbow family and must spread our sunbeam love around to one another!


I love you all, and this pleistoscene hippy can't wait to learn much from all of you and be your friend, yay! (does happy dance)


Love,
Noah Eaton

 

Ooohhh...ooohhh...let me provide a picture for you all!

I have no scanner yet, unfortunately, so I can't provide a full centerfold one for you, but I am featured in this picture taken at the Rally For Peace And Justice, which I was the Junior head of and co-organized.

I'm the one in tie-dye just to the left of center holding the banner!

http://media.portland.indymedia.org/images/2004/10/298907.jpg

Love,
Noah Eaton

 

welcome to hipforums!

 

Welcome to the forums Noah